Steady state is process, change is product 😍

The responsibility of incentivizing the expected (but largely unknown) value of the future

We live in the Now, mostly. Change is a tough process for humans, and some parts of our behavior are wired to reinforce ‘steady state’. We rarely envision a totally new future, and hope we can sign up for doing the arduous job of making it a reality.

Unless you are a Product Manager. Then this comes close to your job definition. Our job is to envision a future state which is more valuable for users and the business, and organize incentives to get there. This requires convincing others that the future value is worth more than the value of Now, and propose a responsible path to this future.

When I worked in Ads in 2014 at Google I co-founded on a low volume / high impact feature in the digital Ads Analytics space. The feature helps advertisers understand the value of their digital advertising in the most robust way possible. Steady state was to use a biased metric. My PM self was convinced the metric I was proposing was significantly better, and the vision of an ‘advertiser centric approach’ to bring this new metric to market was a strong strategy.

But then I ran into so many obstacles. It became so hard to convince folks, and gain support. It forced me to reflect a lot on this moment, and it also helped me refine my story a ton. Through a tenured coworker and friend I was lucky enough to have a meeting with a long standing director in the Ads team. We walked across campus, and he revealed to me what I was missing: the Ads leaders are being pitched 100s of ideas every month. Most ideas are risky, or would outright undermine our customer success for short term revenue increases. The main aspect of leads in Ads is to preserve and grow the customer value, while also unlock value to Google. What convinces them to move off of Now is value to the user, more than anything else.

And the bar was even higher: it can only make us money, if it makes the customer more money! 💰

Ok, so I knew what was happening. My articulating of future value wasn’t framed to fit the incentives of the organization. The incentives were not set on ‘this will make money’. They were set on ‘this will make the customer money’. And the bar was even higher: it can only make us money, if it makes the customer more money.

So I realized how this affected my role as a PM. I needed to change the narrative. Explain how my feature will be growing customers money first, explain how it will grow our value second, then explain how we will do it. Don’t lead with the technical part, the statistical part, the math. Lead with customer value above all else.

I loved how the Ads organization was incentivised to select options which would first grow customer value. It was like a codex. Everyone knew. Everyone was asked to ‘call it’ if the codex wasn’t fulfilled. It felt empowering. Participating in a game with principled rules is allowing you to really prepare yourself well, and it feels fair if you don’t make it this round.

Most of the other functions in a software product world aren’t always incentivised to follow this path. To find new visions of reality and move into them. And sometime for valid reasons.

Fast-forward to 2017. We find ourselves in the midst of the GDPR pre-enforcement window. Most of our feature ideas are being evaluated against compliancy. The legal role is elevated to become a blocker. The incentives for legal to push into new realities of value are diminishing. Product is trying hard to maintain what was long the going working relationship: we consult with you on risk, but we make the call on Go / no-Go. At this time it becomes clear that moving into our new vision of the future isn’t just a matter of doing. It is also a matter of evaluating which function has an incentive to do so.

In 2018 we decide to sunset a Beta product which was largely having value derived from data subject to elevated GDPR scrutiny. This is exactly the data we had doubts about in terms of future stability. It wasn’t just possible to simply push for the future vision. We needed to acknowledge that that future vision was not reachable anymore, and we adjusted our course.

The proposal to shutdown the Beta was well received by many functions. Service was overwhelmed with the load of a Beta product in the complex field of Ads Analytics. Customers and partners couldn’t sell the product. Integrations were lacking, and the sales team was really not keen on pushing another ‘half baked’ solution. We looked at it and realized: Product might be the only one interested in making this future state a reality. And that was hard, to a point where it was impossible. You can’t carry it all alone.

It helped me see that if changes are needed, you call for a PM. If you have no changes to deal with, you actually might not need a PM at this point. Steady state is process, change is Product.

Take Action 🎬

📅 If you ever have any questions, feel free to book time with me for a quick PM consultation session.

📚 To learn about the growth mindset, read Mindset, by Carol Dweck. The book is a foundational shift in how we perceive the development of motivation, and skills. It provides practical approaches you can apply every day with your team to increase their performance.